Art meets science

Photo by Steven Brooke, courtesy the artist

Maybe Fritz Haeg would like to install my own Salon Contra in the Hirshhorn! :) LOVE this!

Keith Waddington and Mindy Nelson are turning their lives inside out for art this summer. The Miami-area couple, who are scientists and artists, signed up to participate in an exhibition called "Convention" for which they will see their foyer and living-room furniture shipped out to the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and a bunch of people shipped into their residence for a series of salons meant to foster discussion on diverse topics.

"Salon Colada, Miami HQ" as the Waddington-Nelson part of the exhibition is known, was conceived by Los Angeles–based artist Fritz Haeg. While museum-goers will make themselves comfortable on the couple’s transplanted furniture, Haeg has designed a seating arrangement in the vacated space in their home suitable for conversation.

Waddington and Nelson were selected in part because of their dual backgrounds as artists — both paint and create other works — and scientists. Waddington is a biology professor at the University of Miami who teaches courses in animal behavior, process in science, and a new area called ArtScience. Nelson in an ecologist and behaviorist studying fish abnormalities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Convention" is on view through Sept. 13.

“I’m a scientist,” he says, “but in the last five years I’ve become really interested in art. I’m interested in the juncture between science and art. My burning interest for about a year has been to try to bring people who are artists and in the humanities together with scientists.”

From Artinfo.